Technical drawing and display programs (CAD, AutoDesk, JT2Go Viewer, etc.), special applications (3D computer tomography etc.) and also simple 3D viewers for private or at least not purely commercial usage (Google Earth, Microsoft Virtual Earth, etc.) offer the possibility of displaying individual objects or objects made up of several parts or even complete environments (manufacturing plants, virtual worlds) in 3D and of observing them from different perspectives.
The most common method for establishing the angle of view on an object is direct manipulation on the actual object. Hereby, as a rule the computer mouse cursor is clicked on the object, wherein movement in the horizontal and/or vertical direction rotates the object relative to its center point for as long as the mouse button is pressed. Depending upon the mouse buttons used, it is frequently also possible to move the object or zoom it in or out. Thereby, as a rule, the center point of the object, which, when setting the perspectives, serves as a reference point for the direction of view, is not varied.
Virtually all common programs with 3D functionality for the observation of objects operate in accordance with this principle. In some cases, certain tilting movements, rotations and other short movement sequences are also possible by selection from a context menu or available in the form of pictograms, which are displayed permanently on the concrete or abstract object at the relevant places or as soon as the mouse cursor dwells on the relevant places of the concrete object.
The patent application US 2007/0282792A1 discloses a system and method for storing, accessing and displaying location-based information (geo-located content) in a 3D model.
It is also known how to select predefined views via a context menu. These can be explicitly defined in advance or specified by the course of the X, Y and Z axes (for example, in the form of “front”, “rear”, “left”, “top”, “east”, “north-west”, etc). Predefined views of this kind are generally directly activated and do not provide the observer result with a smooth sequence of the view.
In the case of two-dimensional views, generally in the form of maps, with known computer-assisted approaches, the mouse is used to “grip” an arbitrary point and the whole area is moved with the movement of the mouse. Hereby, larger changes of view require frequent “regripping”. Alternatively, here there is also frequently a possibility for selecting approximately fixed geographical points from a pre-defined list and activating them.